tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post2240610171419582114..comments2023-12-20T04:18:41.617-06:00Comments on The Hunting of the Snark: Rich People Hate YouSusan of Texashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-70689547838584364982011-12-17T13:44:48.635-06:002011-12-17T13:44:48.635-06:00The whole story of why Megan suddenly got her act ...The whole story of why Megan suddenly got her act together a month or 2 ago suddenly became clear yesterday. More a "Doh!" moment than a Eureka. Lord knows she wasn't the only person on the internets posting drunk.<br /><br />I could be wrong, and Susan's contractual theory could be right. We should know in about 2 more months.Downpuppyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10312490198813632190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-65075450352672373942011-12-17T09:14:03.147-06:002011-12-17T09:14:03.147-06:00Morgan Bushmill McSuderman is due next June.
You ...<i>Morgan Bushmill McSuderman is due next June.<br /><br />You mean Milton Pinochet McSuderman.</i><br /><br />At some point, $1,500 blenders won't cut it anymore and Megan will decide she needs a child. Nine months with no booze or cigarettes will be a small price to pay for the greatest material possession of all, a miniature version of herself.Dillonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-54978285801072577562011-12-16T18:05:45.955-06:002011-12-16T18:05:45.955-06:00You mean Milton Pinochet McSuderman.
I think she...You mean Milton Pinochet McSuderman. <br /><br />I think she is merely supporting her earlier statement that we can't change the poor's circumstances.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-53063223562272638542011-12-16T18:04:37.144-06:002011-12-16T18:04:37.144-06:00Batocchio, thanks.Batocchio, thanks.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-41155978199232615262011-12-16T17:35:45.207-06:002011-12-16T17:35:45.207-06:00The whole mystery of "Why is Megan's post...The whole mystery of "Why is Megan's posting suddenly coherent?" made sense today: <br /><br />Morgan Bushmill McSuderman is due next June.<br /><br />We're finally seeing what Megan sounds like sober.Downpuppyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10312490198813632190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-4856046307085888742011-12-15T12:32:07.800-06:002011-12-15T12:32:07.800-06:00"If you assume you know the choice they shoul..."If you assume you know the choice they should make, and that there is some reliable way to entice them to make it, you're imagining away their humanity, and replacing it with an automaton."<br /><br />Funny. That's exactly what she does <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/if-i-were-a-poor-black-kid/249996/" rel="nofollow">in like her very next post</a>.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-10082252265961395692011-12-15T03:35:42.032-06:002011-12-15T03:35:42.032-06:00It still boggles my mind that this entitled ignora...<i>It still boggles my mind that this entitled ignoramus was an I.T. consultant.</i><br />Why, precisely? Her worldview is one you will often find among IT people, especially consultants. Those are people who get paid good money for their opinions or even their mere presence. It is a small wonder most of them end up being selfish self-centered assholes, i.e. libertarians.<br />Same is true of coders and the fact that in their case, a certain skill is involved, does not change a thing.bulbulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14505565281151328789noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-13977906554996261062011-12-15T03:26:33.721-06:002011-12-15T03:26:33.721-06:00One of your best posts.
McBargle's bullshit...One of your best posts. <br /><br />McBargle's bullshit is delivered with more sanctimony, more fake concern, but also more raw evil than usual: 'Poor people choose to be poor, and giving them things or money or even jobs will not help them.' What about impoverished students whose families value education but who are stuck in crappy schools (with some good but overwhelmed teachers)? I've worked with some such students and their parents, and I imagine many teachers have. McBargle's response is to pay teachers less, fire them... and to blame the poor for their condition. Meanwhile, she occasionally admits how astonishingly lazy and lucky she's been, and then attributes her position to... merit. Economic Calvinism, neo-feudalism and Randism mean never having to refrain from saying you're superior. <br /><br />Conservatism can be summed up many ways, including through two tenets, directed at those Other People:<br /><br />1. Your misfortune is your own fault.<br />2. I don't need to do fucking anything to help you.<br /><br />...Except perhaps sneer or offer moral condemnation, of course. The thing is, for conservatives, tenet #2 does not actually stem from tenet #1; it's the other way around. As John Kenneth Galbraith observed, “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” McBargle searches for it all the time in her copy of Atlas Shrugged, the Koch report, and her $1500 mixer, but she's so awful at crafting effective propaganda.Batocchiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02193752396025012825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-61626291611986973612011-12-14T22:28:31.409-06:002011-12-14T22:28:31.409-06:00Susan - you are a gem! Love your work and you are ...Susan - you are a gem! Love your work and you are so fucking spot-on about the McMegan's lack of....human connection.<br /><br />I don't know how anyone can defend not having a soul, but it seems to me The McMegan would whip out a $1500 kitchen gadget and calculate why it's not necessary to have a soul if one only makes the right choices and belongs to the right class, and can have the last word in the comment section of her blog in a National Magazine's online edition.jcrickethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04557218312416195064noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-65477610857506571152011-12-14T18:42:41.443-06:002011-12-14T18:42:41.443-06:00Who are the rich? Many years ago I tried to unders...Who are the rich? Many years ago I tried to understand inequality better and came up with this: http://www.poorcity.richcity.org/<br /><br />But today I think, that people will be driven by suffering rather than by reason to find a dergree of inequelity which minimizes destructive discontent. So I gave up and started to play with the Snark:<br />http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonnetmaker/<br /><br />That is how I found this Snark blog ;-)Goetzhttp://www.flickr.com/people/bonnetmaker/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-20027507146317571722011-12-14T17:33:59.652-06:002011-12-14T17:33:59.652-06:00"It still boggles my mind that this entitled ..."It still boggles my mind that this entitled ignoramus was an I.T. consultant."<br /><br />You must not have met many IT consultants, or at least not the completely useless ones I've been exposed to...OBShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11290768768025981403noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-20921701049056323662011-12-14T16:01:39.569-06:002011-12-14T16:01:39.569-06:00Two things:
1. It all comes from a mindset that t...Two things:<br /><br />1. It all comes from a mindset that there are fat, lazy people out there who would rather sponge off welfare (which, in the mind of the world's McArdles, pays about $50,000 a year for life) than work. Once you realize that's not the case - that poor people are actually normal people - you begin to think maybe there's something else going on. Evidently, Megan wants credit from us for being "consistent" (heartless) enough to throw a woman she once knew in the "worthless immoral" category.<br /><br />2. "Jobs"? She does that twice. "Jobs." There's gotta be a word for this conservative habit of putting something that actually exists into quotation marks, thus implying that it's a phony, made-up concept. Cf. "Rich."Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-41195007404062527972011-12-14T15:52:49.407-06:002011-12-14T15:52:49.407-06:00"What I am struggling to say is that however ..."What I am struggling to say is that however much those choices are now inflected by what went before--and the problems of other people in their families and communities--they are choices. We understand that the middle class girl I grew up with is driving her situation by behavior that is probably not very amenable to outside influence. Why do we assume that people who grew up poor are somehow more pliable?"<br /><br />OMFG. I got till there. I thought I could make it to the end but I couldn't. I'll try again later. I don't know how you do it!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-88633040752431271792011-12-14T15:39:57.071-06:002011-12-14T15:39:57.071-06:00The ugly assumption in Megan's little column i...The ugly assumption in Megan's little column is is the idea that ALL the poor ALWAYS behave immorally ALL the time. S , in other word, being poor is just a moral failure and nothing else. <br /><br />What a novel idea! Straight out of Gilded Age 1.0! A time when, as G.B. Shaw put it, the idea was that "poverty isn't a crime, but it ought to be." And Horatio Alger still lives, I suppose....<br /><br />But for McMegan, the moral failings of her Wall Street pals are just "the cost of doing business," I suppose. To be paid for by the littlepople taxpayers, I guess....Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-60277145745503961272011-12-14T13:41:04.255-06:002011-12-14T13:41:04.255-06:00By an appalling, if amusing, coinkydink, Kevin Dru...By an appalling, if amusing, coinkydink, Kevin Drum this morning posted on the return of debtor's prisons:<br />http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/debtors-prison-backPetehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03830774223073462725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-82161180832728017202011-12-14T13:27:15.571-06:002011-12-14T13:27:15.571-06:00The comments to that article are scary. Megan'...The comments to that article are scary. Megan's fans would cheer for the return of debtor's prisons. <br /><br />Somewhere in heaven, Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo are thinking the American revolution was a fricking waste of time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-34716282008216691442011-12-14T12:44:44.908-06:002011-12-14T12:44:44.908-06:00If 100% of the 1% were criminals (um, bear with me...If 100% of the 1% were criminals (um, bear with me) and 1.1% of the rest of us were criminals, then it would still be true that the majority of ... but she never was good with math, and anyway a large majority of the 1% are in fact either criminals or the descendants of criminals. Personally, I'd put their apologists on the tumbrels first.Petehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03830774223073462725noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-33342605553277584962011-12-14T12:43:52.561-06:002011-12-14T12:43:52.561-06:00The gang (including Susan) give this loathesome es...The gang (including Susan) give this loathesome essay a thorough debunking over at Roy's place, but I can't believe I didn't notice this before:<br /><br /><i>To assume that there is something that could change her behavior is to assume away her agency.</i><br /><br />This, from the same apologist-for-greed by whom "incentive" is presented with a straight face as a justification for lower taxes on the rich and on corporations.<br /><br />How come, Megs, the incentive of a decent-paying job would not be enough to induce your friend to change her behavior? Wouldn't that also embody her agency? And even if that's not the case with your friend, so what? She's one person. What makes her representative of an entire social class?<br /><br />Just come out and say it: The rich are praiseworthy when the pursuit of wealth causes them to act in certain ways, but the poor are "what they are," are (sadly, tragically) unaffected by such incentives, and are doomed to their fate.<br /><br />It's Social Darwinism--the only kind of Darwinism the right is comfy with. Ask for it by name.Mr.Wonderfulnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-75809527631266162692011-12-14T12:36:44.823-06:002011-12-14T12:36:44.823-06:00Oddly enough, I still remember Alan Price's ly...Oddly enough, I still remember Alan Price's lyrics from O Lucky Man! -<br /><br /><i>Poor people are poor people -<br />And they don't understand<br />A man's got to make whatever he wants-<br />And take it with his own hands.<br /><br />Poor people stay poor people -<br />And they never get to see<br />Someone's got to win in the human race-<br />If it isn't you, then it has to be me.<br /><br />So smile while you're makin' it-<br />Laugh while you're takin' it-<br />Even though you're fakin' it-<br />Nobody's gonna know.</i><br /><br /><br />Is it a small measure of progress that Megan has to defend her selfishness?Downpuppyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10312490198813632190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-15315966857062267852011-12-14T12:13:33.325-06:002011-12-14T12:13:33.325-06:00This was the quote that set my blood to high boil:...This was the quote that set my blood to high boil:<br /><br /><i>she is poor because she does the things that poor people do</i><br /><br />Like "poor" is some monolithic descriptor that accounts for all behavior. She really is a soulless moron.fishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-13339072041480220132011-12-14T12:08:25.768-06:002011-12-14T12:08:25.768-06:00but the majority of criminals are poor people
bec...<i>but the majority of criminals are poor people</i><br /><br />because their crimes are punished, but with bankers <i>bygones</i>! because something something somethingfishhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01522672049371678717noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-10321683267162132482011-12-14T11:59:06.904-06:002011-12-14T11:59:06.904-06:00It still boggles my mind that this entitled ignora...It still boggles my mind that this entitled ignoramus was an I.T. consultant.<br />~ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©https://www.blogger.com/profile/06252371815131259831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-74247713708510865682011-12-14T11:53:27.660-06:002011-12-14T11:53:27.660-06:00It's not their skin color, it's their &quo...It's not their skin color, it's their "culture." Which seems to be based on their skin color.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-44157229145670255512011-12-14T11:52:45.600-06:002011-12-14T11:52:45.600-06:00It's funny that no matter what someone's c...It's funny that no matter what someone's circumstances might be, poverty is still a matter of personal choice.Susan of Texashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00076915322771385454noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2222630007427380394.post-56867854751682464822011-12-14T11:51:56.500-06:002011-12-14T11:51:56.500-06:00Also, apparently the argument that the poor are un...Also, apparently the argument that the poor are unwilling to take a jobs is inoperative, now that there are no jobs, so poverty must be the result of something else. It's just a matter of flailing about until Megan figures out what that is.<br /><br />It was easier back in the day when it could be claimed that they are poor because of the color of their skin; even if McArdle gets close as dammit to stating that explicitly in this one.zombie rotten mcdonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10601960953323752278noreply@blogger.com